Name two important ideas from the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

Why this is the answer

This question asks for two answers, and the official list offers six. They make more sense as one connected argument than as six separate words. Start with the Declaration of Independence. Its second paragraph says all men are created equal, which is the idea of equality, and that every person is endowed with unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Rights that people are born with and that no government can take away are called natural rights, and liberty is one of them. The same paragraph says governments get their just powers from the consent of the governed. That is the social contract: people voluntarily give power to a government so it will protect their rights, and if it fails to, they can take that power back. The Constitution turns those ideas into a working system. It opens with "We the People," and one of the purposes it states is to secure the blessings of liberty. In the United States the government gets its power to govern from the people, a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and that is self-government. The framers also wanted to limit the powers of government, so they separated those powers into three branches. That is limited government. At the interview, give two different items from the list. One alone leaves the answer incomplete, so decide on your pair before you walk in. Equality and liberty are the shortest and the hardest to mispronounce. If you prefer a pair that tells a story, natural rights and limited government work well together: people are born with rights, and government is kept within limits so it cannot trample them. Avoid answers that describe the opposite of these ideas, like rule by a monarch, titles of nobility or a government without limits. Each one contradicts something on the official list. A sentence worth rehearsing ties all six together: equal people with natural rights, including liberty, agree to a limited government that they run themselves.